Frankie obtained her Master of Chemistry degree from the University of Liverpool, UK, and completed her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry under the supervision of Dr Craig Jamieson at The University of Strathclyde, UK. She continued research as a Chemical Biology Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery (CICBDD) at UNC under the supervision of Prof Stephen Frye and Prof Lindsey James. Postdoctoral research focused on the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras (PROTACs) for epigenetic regulators such as Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2).
Sandra Röhm studied Biomedicinal Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University and at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. For her scientific achievements in the field of Chemistry, she was awarded with the Adolf Todt prize from the University of Mainz. In 2015 she joined Professor Stefan Knapp‘s group and the Structural Genomics Consortium in Frankfurt. During her Ph.D. studies, she successfully developed chemical probes targeting the mitogen activated protein kinase p38 and the discoidin domain receptor kinase. In 2020 she continued as a postdoc and worked on kinase inhibitors for Parkinson's disease. As leader of WP2 in the EUbOPEN Consortium, she is coordinating the effort to generate a chemogenomic compound library. Together with her team, her current research interests focus on the design of covalent and allosteric inhibitors with structural novelties.
Andreas Krämer graduated with a diploma in Chemistry from the University of Freiburg in 2012. During his PhD thesis at the University of Darmstadt (2013-2017), he focused on structural studies of bacterial members of the histone deacetylase superfamily (HDAC). After completing his PhD, he joined the group led by Stefan Knapp at the SGC Frankfurt as a postdoc, where he was funded by the Wellcome Trust, working on the structure-based development of selective and potent CaMK1D kinase inhibitors for the treatment of highly aggressive subtypes of breast cancer. Afterwards he worked at the Frankfurt Cancer Institute (FCI) as a staff scientist where, among other things, he was responsible for developing a comprehensive screening platform for kinases. In the beginning of 2022, Andreas became a principal investigator and is responsible for running the X-ray crystallography facility unit. His current research interests focus primarily on the structural biology of kinases and E3 ligases.
Andreas C. Joerger obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg, Germany in 2000 for elucidating the reaction mechanism and structural basis of substrate specificity of a zinc-dependent aldolase. He then assumed a postdoc position in the group of Prof. Sir Alan Fersht at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Protein Engineering in Cambridge, United Kingdom, initially working on protein design. He stayed on as a senior scientist in structural biology until 2010, before moving to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (2010-2015). During his long spell at the MRC, he made key contributions towards unraveling the complex structural biology of the tumor suppressor p53 and related proteins. He determined the first crystal structures of p53 cancer mutants, which led to the Y220C mutant being used as a paradigm for the development of mutant p53 rescue drugs based on protein stabilization. In 2016, Dr. Joerger joined the group of Prof. Stefan Knapp at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. He is currently a German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded project leader on targeting the p53 mutome for cancer therapy; and co-investigator on a grant from Worldwide Cancer Research for the development of Y220C mutant stabilizers. His other research interests include the evolutionary history of the p53 pathway, epigenetic targets and general principles of molecular interactions.
Krishna Saxena joined the SGC Frankfurt July 2020. Krishna studied Biochemistry in Frankfurt (Germany) followed by a PhD (1999) in heterologous expression of membrane proteins at the Institute of Biochemistry (Frankfurt). Then, he was leading a molecular biology and protein expression group for a collaboration between Aventis Research & Technologies and the Goethe University (1999-2001), later MRPharm (2001-2002), a biotechnology company spin out of Frankfurt University and shortly part of Affinium Pharmaceuticals. The focus of his work became structure-based drug discovery by NMR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. From 2003-2011, he was working as a group leader (collaboration Sanofi and Goethe University) to study the family of protein kinases and subsequently to investigate biomedically relevant protein-protein interactions (PPIs) with focus on the modulation of such interactions by low molecular weight ligands guided by NMR technology. Since 2012, he has worked in the drug development platform at the DKTK German Cancer Consortium and for several industrial collaborations.
Thomas Hanke studied Pharmacy at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 2014, he completed his PhD in the field of pharmaceutical chemistry, investigating the synthesis and pharmacological characterization of dual 5-lipoxygenase and microsomal prostaglandin E2 synthase-1 inhibitors as a new alternative strategy for anti-inflammatory drugs. In 2015, he joined Stefan Knapp´s group where he is working on the development of chemical probes for targeting kinases. For that, he is pursuing different strategies, including the synthesis of allosteric kinase inhibitors (e.g. for LIMK1/2) and the synthesis of macrocyclic compounds to generate new chemistry for targeting kinases.
Susanne Müller-Knapp studied Human Biology in Marburg Germany followed by a PhD in molecular biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden (1997). She then had more than 6 years of postdoctoral training in the area of inflammation and gene regulation at the Karolinska Institute and at the DIBIT San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy.
In 2004 Susanne joined the Structural Genomics Consortium, SGC, in Oxford. The SGC is an international public private partnership that currently comprises 8 international pharmaceutical companies and a large network of academic and industrial collaborators. Susanne worked at the SGC first as External Research Manager and then Scientific Coordinator. She has been the Project Manager of the Epigenetic Probe Project, which generates tool compounds with defined specificity and selectivity for epigenetic targets and the cell based assay group at the SGC in Oxford testing the cellular activity of the in vitro characterized tool compounds. In her role as Chief Operating Officer at the SGC Frankfurt Susanne is now coordinating several probe programs including the global SGC kinase chemical probe program and the donated probe program, which makes probes available from the pharmaceutical partners of the SGC. She is also Director of Operations of the Chemical Probes Portal, an online platform, providing e recommendations for the right choice and use of chemical probes https://www.chemicalprobes.org/.
The Cellular assay group establishes cellular model systems to establish the efficacy of the developed inhibitors and then further uses them to increase the knowledge of the biological function of the targeted proteins as well as validate their role in disease as a target for pharmacological intervention.
Prof Stefan Knapp studied Chemistry at the University of Marburg (Germany) and at the University of Illinois (USA). He did his PhD in protein crystallography at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) (1996) and continued his career at the Karolinska Institute as a postdoctoral scientist (1996-1999). In 1999, he joined the Pharmacia Corporation as a principal research scientist in structural biology and biophysics. He left the company in 2004 to set up a research group at the Structural Genomics Consortium at Oxford University (SGC). From 2008 to 2015 he was a Professor of Structural Biology at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine (NDM) at Oxford University (UK) and between 2012 and 2015 he was the Director for Chemical Biology at the Target Discovery Institute (TDI). He joined Frankfurt University (Germany) in 2015 as a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Buchmann Institute of Molecular Life Sciences. He remains associated to the SGC as a visiting Professor at Oxford and he is also adjunct Professor of the George Washington University. Since 2017 he is the CSO of the newly founded SGC node at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His research interests are the rational design of selective inhibitors that target protein kinases as well as protein interactions modules that function as reader domains of the epigenetic code.
My laboratory is interested in understanding molecular mechanisms that regulate protein function of key signalling molecules and how these mechanisms can be utilized for the development of highly selective and potent inhibitors (chemical probes). As a basis for this work we have generated a comprehensive set of high resolution crystal structures that cover most members of the protein family of interest. We are particularly interested in protein interactions module of the bromodomain family that specifically recognize ε-N-lysine acetylation motifs, a key event in the reading process of epigenetic marks. This effort generated several highly selective chemical probes targeting bromodomains. A second research focus is on protein kinases. Our laboratory has solved a comprehensive set of crystal structure of this large protein family offering the opportunity to understand molecular mechanisms of their regulation and developing new strategies for their selective targeting. We developed for example a number of highly selective inhibitors by exploring unusual binding modes and allosteric binding sites. A particular focus of the laboratory is also to understand structural mechanisms leading to slow binding kinetics as part of the K4DD consortium.
Rafael M. Couñago, PhD, is a Principal Investigator at the Structural Genomics Consortium Chemical Biology Center at the University of North Carolina (SGC-UNC), Chapel Hill. Rafael´s research group at SGC-UNC uses protein biochemistry, structural biology and cell-based assays to illuminate protein function and explore new therapeutic strategies for human diseases. Current research at SGC-UNC is focused on enabling the discovery of new antiviral compounds and realizing SGC´s vision for Target 2035, an open science initiative that aims to create chemical and biological tools for every protein in the human genome with the goal of informing drug discovery (https://www.target2035.net/). Rafael joined SGC-UNC after working as a Principal Investigator at the Center of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil. Prior to that, Rafael served as Team Leader and CSO at SGC-UNICAMP, and was a post-doctoral researcher at the laboratories of Bostjan Kobe at the University of Queensland, Australia; Kurt Krause at Otago University, New Zealand, and Youssif Shamoo at Rice University, USA. Rafael has a strong track record in recombinant protein production, biochemical and cellular assay development, and structure determination, and has participated in a number of early-stage drug discovery projects in collaboration with both academic and industrial partners
David Drewry is a renowned leader in the medicinal chemistry of protein kinases and is one of the principal architects of the research strategy at the SGC-UNC to build an open and collaborative research network to promote target discovery. He previously enjoyed more than 24 years as a medicinal chemist with GlaxoSmithKline and legacy companies, where he led teams working across the preclinical spectrum of drug discovery. His research interests include the art and science of medicinal chemistry, kinase inhibitor design, utilization of annotated sets of kinase inhibitors to build understanding of signaling networks and precompetitive chemical biology to facilitate target identification. After earning a Bachelor’s of Science degree, cum laude, in chemistry from Yale University, Drewry earned his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley in the laboratory of Paul Bartlett, working on the design, synthesis and mechanistic studies of zinc protease inhibitors. Drewry is currently the head of chemistry at Meryx Pharmaceuticals, a biotech startup focused on small-molecule inhibitors of Mer kinase that was a spinoff from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Drewry enjoys running, reading and relaxing with his family at local restaurants, the movie theater or in the kitchen playing board games.